Interconnection: Renewable Energy USA

Welcome to Megawatt Recruitment’s monthly newsletter to keep you connected to what’s going on in the renewable energy industry in the United States and provide more insight, knowledge, and connection to the people and companies who drive our industry.

What People Are Talking About

• BEOM ‘s final environmental assessment of OWF in the Gulf of Mexico is a win for the industry.
• Ocean Wind 1 received final EIS from BOEM for NJ’s first OWF.
• New Jersey’s Third Offshore Wind auction closed on June 23rd.
• SouthCoast Wind in Rhode Island, a JV between Shell and Ocean Winds, looked to cancel and renegotiate terms for its 1.2GW project citing rising costs of raw materials and supply chain post-COVID.  This follows a similar effort announced by Avangrid, the developer of Commonwealth Wind in Massachusetts in December 2022.
• South Fork Wind, developed by Orsted and Eversource in New York, achieved “first steel in the water” as did Vineyard Wind 1, developed by Avangrid and Copenhagen Offshore Partners, in Massachusetts.
• State of NY passed legislation to expand the drilling depth of closed loop geothermal bore holes beyond 500 without making geothermal drillers incur the same treatment as oil & gas drilling.
• Lightsource BP closed project financing of $460M for construction and operation of a 368MW portfolio of projects in Indiana and Louisiana.
• Nexamp received $400M+ for 49 solar+BESS projects in IL, MA, MD, MN, & NY.
• US Govt released H2 strategy: targets 10 mtpa by 2030, 20 mtpa by 2040, and 50 mtpa by 2050 and $2/kg from 2026-2029 and $1/kg from 2030-2035.
• A new IEA report predicts global renewable power will add 107GW, bringing the global total to 440GW, a 33% increase over last year.
• 30MW turbine proposed by Freja Offshore, a JV between Hexicon and Mainstream Renewable Power, for an OWF in Sweden with a height up to 370 meters and rotor diameter of 340 meters.
• TPG Rise Climate invested $250M into Ohmium, a developer of Green Hydrogen, that provides scalable, interlocking electrolyzer modules.
• Hawthorne Renewables created through the merger of Power Capital Energy Group and Sulus Solar, raised $250M from Omnes Capital to build a 2GW portfolio of solar by 2030.

Recent Personnel Moves and Promotions

• Pine Gate Renewables welcomed Judith Hall as Chief Legal Officer and Phillip North as Chief Commercial Officer, and promoted Jonathan Saxon from Head of Development to Chief Development Officer.
• Copenhagen Offshore Partners promoted Audrey Dai from Head of Talent Acquisition to Senior People Partner and Value Chain Lead.
• David Galley took on a new position as Project Director of Power-to-X focused on hydrogen and e-fuels with Orsted, formerly working as a Project Development Manager for the Pecan Island Carbon Capture Project with ExxonMobil.
• Solariant Capital and Energy Shares gained a new Director of Finance, Eric Kang, who previously worked in Project Finance for Avantus (formerly known as 8minute Energy).
• Kui Xu joined Eversource Energy as Project Manager. Also at Eversource, William Robarge was promoted to Lead Engineer.
• Making the jump from recruiter to Project Development Associate, Brian Dunleavy joined Delaware River Solar.
• Andrew Blevin, formerly CFO of Safari Energy, joined Aspen Power, a distributed energy generation platform, as Chief Risk Officer.
• Also formerly with Safari Energy as Executive Director of Engineering and Automation, Paulo Perillo has moved to Solar Landscape as Chief Technology Officer.
• Joining Stonepeak Infrastructure Partners in New York as Senior Managing Director is Michael Leitner, formerly Co-Head of Direct Lending and Special Situations for Blackrock.
• Geoff Slevin has a new role as Senior Director of Origination for Clean Energy Solutions with NextEra Energy Resources in Florida. He was formerly Key Segment Manager of Sustainable Energy Solutions with Duke Energy.
• Generate Capital welcomed Gerron Blackwell as Director of Asset Management in San Francisco, previously with Liberty as Asset Strategy Manager in Canada.

Mid-year Review

As we approach the end of the first half of 2023, it is an opportune time to look back at what has been accomplished thus far and what the journey ahead may bring.

As of January 2023, 73.5 GW of utility-scale solar and 141.3 GW of wind (on & offshore) capacity was operating in the United States. According to the IEA, solar and wind capacities are each slated to increase by 40% in 2023. Much of this is attributed to the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, which provides incentives for renewable energy development.

We certainly saw evidence of strong investment in the first half of the year such as Intersect power obtaining an $800 million revolving credit line for clean energy; Silicon Ranch’s $600 million equity raise for its 1.1GW pipeline of Solar + BESS; Hectate Energy, 40% owned by Repsol, securing a $550 million debt facility for a pipeline of 35GW of utility-scale solar; and of course, hundreds of millions more bid during New Jersey’s Third Offshore Wind solicitation which is expected to produce between 1.2 to 4.0 GW of capacity.

However, all was not rosy in the first half of the year. Offshore wind developers who signed PPAs before the war in Ukraine started are having trouble making their projects economically viable. Since 2021, interest rates have increased, inflation has grown faster than expected, and the supply chain still has not recovered from COVID-19. This has caused South Coast Wind and Commonwealth Wind off the coast of Massachusetts to terminate their current contracts and plan to rebid in the upcoming rounds in 2024.

Three positive outcomes came from this trouble. First, Massachusetts has lifted the price cap which required that each successive project come it at a lower price than the previous one which should help with future auctions. Second, the next RFP contains a mechanism to make retroactive increases or decreases in pricing based on future economic conditions. Third is that on June 16^th, 2023, eight states in the Northeast sent a joint letter to the federal government requesting support on interregional transmission planning.

Hopefully, as a country, we can take these lessons learned to places like California, where BOEM expects to develop up to 5MW of offshore wind by 2030 and 25MW by 2045, and the Gulf of Mexico where 508,000 acres could be developed by 2030 producing around 15GW of wind power.

Hiring Trends

We are seeing strong demand for Project Developers from Analyst to Director-level across solar, wind, and hydrogen. These roles are spread throughout the U.S. for solar and hydrogen though, naturally, offshore wind roles are more concentrated in the Northeast for the moment.

As companies are anticipating new projects, we have also seen multiple companies hire for Interconnection and Transmission Planning roles, both within developers as well as consultancies, and demand for people with Government Relations and Stakeholder Engagement backgrounds.

Supply chain and Procurement are two additional areas commanding attention from both solar and wind developers. As the projected capacity of solar grows globally, developers across the board are looking to secure panels, inverters, cables, racking systems, and related equipment at reasonable prices and in timely manners. Thus, many companies are seeking dedicated personnel in-house to keep a pulse on supply chain and procurement to ensure their projects are not delayed due to equipment shortages or shipping delays.

Thank you for joining us for another issue of Interconnection: Renewable Energy USA. We hope you enjoyed it and we look forward to keeping in touch and exchanging ideas, insights, and opinions. If you are a company considering hiring, we welcome the opportunity to present our services and capabilities. If you are a candidate, please check our jobs page or reach out to us to discuss your background, skills, and future aspirations.